Page:Stanwood Pier--Harding of St Timothys.djvu/69

Rh "There's one other thing I came to tell you," said Rupert. "You notice I'm not wearing my pin. You and Herrick and Watson needn't feel much worried about SB. I suppose you thought we were trying to work against the Crown?"

"We did have that idea," Harry admitted.

"I'll tell you about SB," Rupert said. "One day I saw Francis Stoddard snubbed by Bruce Watson, who'd always been his special friend. Watson threw him over—to run with some of you fellows after being taken into the Crown. I saw that Stoddard was feeling pretty sore and lonely, and I thought it would make him feel better to have somebody intimate with him. And then I thought it would be pretty good fun for him and me to pretend we were members of a secret society—that would seem intimate, all right. I thought, too, it would be quite a joke to get the Crown and the other fellows in the school excited about it. At the last moment we decided to take Jerry Dorr and Nat Belmont into our fake society; it would make it look a little more real.